We asked our photographers for a little insight. A favourite photograph and why?
It started as fun an idea to get to know them and has turned into a lovely series.
Enjoy.
It’s almost impossible to pick a favourite photo, but this is a recent fave that I’m grateful I was in the right place at the right time. I had just finished a swim to wash off some jet lag just outside of Rome and was taking my first sips of a beer when I glanced over and saw this scene. I grabbed my camera and luckily took this photo. It’s the middle shot of three frames I took. I love the spirit of the two lads, and the image poses more questions to me than answers, which makes me keep looking at it. It’s won a few awards locally and internationally, including Best Lifestyle image in 2022 by American Photographic Artists.
It’s a constant lesson to me in always carrying my camera. You just never know!
Kenny Smith Photographer
Choosing my favourite shot was really hard to do. There are so many that are faves for different reasons. It may have been great talent, a great team, great location, a great moment, or a great idea. I’m an ex art director, so (advertising) ideas are just baked into my thinking. This shot for Vic Bitter, taken during filming of their recent TV campaign shoot, had all of the above going for it, plus a couple of other things.
Our talent looked great, all glistened up. And he had no trouble at all emoting the ‘hard earned thirst’ look in 35º midday heat. Perfect time and weather for a beer ad. The location, a dead straight dirt road between paddocks out back of Goulburn, was especially perfect because of the chalky white gravel surface. So you had this intense, hard sunlight beating down, and lovely bounce light coming up from the road, filling in the shadows.
The production team were great to work with, and the creative team, Joe Sibley and Hugh Gurney (Droga5 Melbourne), had come up with two bloody great scripts. This one named, ‘The healer of the two wheeler’ was about a bloke stuck in the middle of nowhere needing to perform open heart surgery on his bike.
But the thing I’m most pleased with is the composition. When I first approached this shot, I knelt down so the camera was at eye level with the talent. However, there were two things bothering me. Firstly, the subject and background grass were at the same level and competing visually. Secondly,I could see power poles, buildings and mountains in the distance, which killed the idea that this man was perilously far from any assistance.
So I lay down sniper style, not so comfortable on hot gravel, and the shot vastly improved. The distant poles and mountains were gone. The road leading to the horizon looked kilometres longer than it really was. And the subject was now rising clear, uncluttered above the grass.
I could see the poster in my mind’s eye. Lovely clear space for a headline. Room for a pack shot just over there. Done.
Maybe all those years as an art director weren’t in vain.
Michael Malherbe Photographer
This is my favourite photo. Not because it’s the best or the most celebrated, but because it was the first. It was early June in 1994. I was four years old, on a trip to Tasmania with my mother and Nana. I asked for the camera. Not to perform or impress, just because I wanted to make something. There was no doubt, no self-awareness. Just a pull.
I took their portrait. Full length, natural light, no smiles. It’s not far from how I shoot now.
It wasn’t skill. It wasn’t even taste. It came before all that. Before influence, before it became a job, before I knew anything about what a photo “should” be. I just wanted to hold something of that moment. It was just the three of us. My grandfather stayed home. And for a long time, they were my whole world. That instinct to witness quietly, reverently, was already there.
That photo feels like a seed. Something planted early. Something I keep returning to without always realising it. Even now, the work I care about most comes from that same place. A quiet need to witness, to honour, to offer.
If I could speak to that boy now, I’d say, Keep going. You already know what matters.
Photography might be the tool, but the point is to grow. To pay attention to what matters.
To keep returning to that same quiet instinct I had as a child. Before I knew what I was doing, but somehow already knew why. And maybe that’s what faith is too. Not having the full picture, but still raising the camera anyway.
Joel Pratley Photographer
This image remains one of my all-time favourites!
I had just returned from living in the UK, drifting between time zones and identities, when I met a model named Charly Brown — enigmatic, magnetic, and strangely familiar, like someone I'd dreamed of long before we ever met.
I had this vision: a shoot deep within the Australian Museum, surrounded by skeletons and shadows. At first, they said no — but something drove me to push.
I arranged a meeting and somehow, I convinced them to let us in.. The museum was ours. Silent. Empty. Ominous. Still.
As the last echo of the security guard’s footsteps faded, we were swallowed into the gloom. Eerie sounds enveloped us — the floor groaning underfoot, the static hum of display lights, the low creak of history settling in its bones. Every corridor whispered, every shadow seemed to twitch. The taxidermy animals — glassy-eyed and ancient — felt almost animated under the moody, flickering light.
We shot quickly, instinctively, as if something was watching. Something waiting. The images were haunting — cinematic and strangely alive. This image marked the start of a 15-year creative collaboration with Charly Brown — my muse, my mirror. Years later, we released a book together: Layers of the Kaleidoscope Qween. But this photo.. this moment in the dead hush of a museum, after dark, surrounded by creatures that never really died.”
Chrissie Hall Photographer
This is probably my favourite image I’ve taken. If not the favourite, then the one I remember taking most clearly. It was a rare snow day in Tokyo in 2018, just days before I moved back to Sydney.
I grabbed my Hasselblad 500cm and rushed out. It’s a fully mechanical, and having forgotten my light-meter, I had to rely on intuition and muscle memory to expose the film properly. Moments after this shot, the winder froze and I went home.
The two boys reminded me of my younger brother and me, which hit me as I was framing the shot. It felt personal; a quiet, fleeting moment that somehow said everything about that time. I’d been documenting Tokyo daily in my final months there and this felt like the perfect closing image. There’s a sense of nostalgia and stillness in it that I keep returning to. It captures more than just a snowy block of apartments— it’s memory, transition, and a kind of quiet magic.
Seiya Taguchi Photographer